Benriach 18 Years Old 1996 Single Cask #7176

In 1898, a promising distillery owner called John Duff built the Benriach distillery next to his Longmorn distillery, which had started production a few years earlier. The two distilleries were connected by a private railway that was used to transport coal, barley, peat and barrels. Everything went south because of two extravagant brothers, Robert and Walter Pattison, who thought they could make a quick buck from the whisky industry. Their fraudulent business activities, ostentatious publicity stunts and lavish spending habits set into motion a chain of events that led to the disastrous crash of the Scotch whisky industry at the end of the 19th century. Benriach was one of the many distilleries that went down with the Pattison ship, and it would stay silent for the next 65 years. Luckily, Benriach was reopened in 1965 and to this day the distillery is bringing us fantastic whiskies such as this Benriach 18 Years Old Single Cask Bottling 1996 Cask #7176, released in 2014 as part of the distillery’s annual range of single cask bottlings. The whisky was distilled in 1996 and matured for 18 years, including a finish in a Pedro Ximenez sherry puncheon. It was bottled in July 2014 at a cask strength of 52.4%. Benriach 18 Years Old Single Cask Bottling 1996 Cask #7176 has notes of luxurious chocolate and roasted coffee beans, joined by hints of cherry, ground almond and hot spiced oak.